Snow Box, Angry Birds World and Juniverse Theme Park (Doha Festival City Entertainment Zone)
Opened in 2008, this myriad of entertainment and recreation facilities is the first of its kind in country and attracts millions of visitors annually.
BG&E provided a third-party review and value engineering for the 250,000-square metre shopping centre, Doha Festival City – one of the biggest in the Middle East. Our scope of work included designing the structural steel elements, as well as construction engineering assistance that involved temporary load case design, staging analysis, crane base design and glazing design.
Following this appointment, BG&E was further engaged as the structural engineers for the design of the Snow Box Theme Park, Angry Birds World and the Juniverse Theme Park buildings.
The Snow Box building is part of Doha Festival City’s Entertainment Zone, which includes space for the most advanced indoor snow playing area. The Snow Box envelope was designed as per Qatar Sustainability Guidelines, with strict requirements on maximum cold air leakage to minimise the building’s energy losses.
The building is a free spanning open 50-metre steel structure, in which the sliding hills are formed from insulated concrete. Minus two degrees is the operational temperature required to maintain a snow-covered play area incorporating luges, slides and a live penguin exhibit.
Our thermal team worked hard to design the building’s façade and glazing to accommodate the large temperature variations that occur on the walls that separate the inside from the outside areas – that in summer can exceed 50 degrees Celsius.
Angry Birds World and the Juniverse Theme Park are indoor/outdoor facilities, providing 18 metres of clear high space for a series of themed mezzanines floors. The attractions include boat rides and indoor/outdoor karting track, a floor-to-ceiling tree structure, a circular lift shaft and a Space Odyssey simulator.
The structures are integrated with the food court and the other entertainment zones, within the Doha Festival Shopping Mall. Flexibility for future change of use (of the facilities), was a key consideration in the design – the mezzanine structures are not connected to the building’s primary structural frame. Bearing to the primary structure is through corbels allowing future adaptability of the entertainment space, without significant structural implications to the building envelope or stability system.